


Stars

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Anachronistic, Bohun is a garbage human being in any iteration in any AU, F/F, First Kiss, Gay Marriage Is Somehow Legal & Normal in the 17th Century Because Reasons, Genderswap, Historical Inaccuracy, Pining, Pre-Canon, Sexual Tension, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 07:31:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16806202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: On a winter's night, Helena Kurcewiczówna and her betrothed look up at the sky and see very different things.





	Stars

**Author's Note:**

> A visual of Julija Bohuna, actual human disaster:  
>   
> [(High-res here)](https://66.media.tumblr.com/f195fd2e9e725ecb24a7209adbaf59e6/tumblr_phhj5h6keV1qgm6k5_1280.jpg)  
> [If you haven't seen the eventual ladies!AU OT3 art](https://emo-steppe-falcon.tumblr.com/post/180258522916/helena-kurcewicz%C3%B3wna-julija-bohun-joanna), you should do that thing.  
> All drawn by [ankalime](http://ankalime.tumblr.com/)
> 
> The reasoning behind the name "Julija" was that it sounds like "Jurij".
> 
> * * *

The land slept under winter’s white spell. Days of heavy snow had muffled the world in white, driving all inside.

Nearly all Rozłogi’s household had spent the day in the main hall. The women sewed and spun, the men saw to their gear and weapons. Story and song had whiled away hours. In Rozłogi’s self-contained little world, there were few of either that were not already familiar to all. Helena could have recited her cousin Fedor’s account of his escape from a Tatar _tchambul_ word for word, if only the size of the war band did not grow so much in each telling. That they all knew the same songs was no hardship. Helena loved to sing. She could close herself off to all else around her and find sanctuary in song like a nun in her cloister. Even as the whole room sang around her, there was only ever the music and herself. Helena had thought no one could ever reach her there. No one had ever tried.

That was before she came.

Julija Bohun had ridden like a storm into Helena’s quiet life, bringing all the breathless thrill and fear of thunder.

“Princess,” the Cossack had said, sweeping her hat off, bowing to the floor. “Your aunt has agreed to grant me your hand in marriage.”

Just like that, Helena’s ordered life, with all its sempiternal little predictabilities, tumbled into anarchy.

“Princess?” Julija had raised her head, and now there was an uncertain note in her voice. Helena felt as though solid ground had turned to groaning ice under her feet—any minute it might give way.

 _I’m supposed to say something,_ Helena thought. But she had gone numb, and though she sought for words she found none.

Bohun stood, hat still held in her hand, shoulders still bowed slightly forward, her dark hair catching the light. She wore her hair as most female Cossack warriors did: a long line of braid running back from her brow to the nape of her neck, the scalp shaven on either side. Yet Julija’s hair never seemed to plait neatly. When Helena had first seen Bohun, she had thought of replaiting it for her.

 _When we’re married, I might do so every morning,_ she realised.

Helena imagined the silken slip of dark hair between her fingers, Julija seated before her in her shirt, body still softly warm from lying long abed. From lying in their _marriage_ bed. The bed where...

“Do I displease you so much?” Julija Bohun asked, breaking in on her thoughts.

Of the two of them, it would have been hard to say who feared that question most.

“No,” Helena whispered. She at least could find that one word. It was her only certainly in his moment.

More frightening than Bohun’s fear was the bliss that then swept over the Cossack’s face, a violent rapture closer to madness than happiness.

“But I…” Helena faltered, and the tide of Bohun’s emotions began to turn again. If Helena did not finish her thought, she might see what was left when the wild joy had drained away. Fear lent her strength. “But I hardly know you.”

The gathering storm clouds rolled back again and Julija’s brilliant smile flashed through.

“Ey, then we should spend more time together, shouldn’t we?”

That smile had commanded Helena’s heart beat from the first moment Julija had thundered into Rozłogi’s yard. Helena knew little of such things, but she knew herself unwise in that: she ought not to place her happiness in such ungentle hands.

_But what if I could teach her gentleness?_

Julija dropped to her knees like a knight errant before his lady, like a saint at the feet of an angel.

“Let me prove my love to you, princess. I will make you happy, I swear it! You will be my own sweet bird, and I will sing to teach your heart to sing with mine.”

From that moment on, all the Cossack’s songs had been treasures lain at Helena’s feet. If music had been Helena’s solitary solace, now Bohun’s richly dark voice promised dreams of a world for two. Each song was a hand extended, beckoning.

No one else existed for Helena when Bohun sang those songs. The Cossack’s deft fingers moved over the warm wood of her _teorban_ , coaxing soft chords from the strings. Firelight lit the perfect curve of full lips. Blue-green eyes shone, full of love for her, and for her alone, as no one else’s ever had. And those eyes _saw_ her; Julija desired nothing more than Helena as she was.

_Not my fortune, not Rozłogi, but me. She sees me!_

Some days, Helena could even convince herself that all Julija’s adoration was born of understanding, or at least that Julija might yearn to understand Helena and her thoughts.

“Why do you love me?” she asked Bohun once.

“Do not ask for reasons, sweet princess,” Julija said fervently, taking Helena’s hand and kissing it, eyes closed as if that contact alone were an unbearable ecstasy. “I had no choice.”

_Neither did I._

So few choices had been Helena’s to make.

Now she retreated to her room as night deepened, leaving the great chamber and as hands that had worked all day put down their tasks and took up bottles. Though Helena’s chamber had been cold, it had been a relief to escape the crowded hall.

She curled beneath furs and blankets in her bed, not bothering to light a taper, leaving the door ajar so she could hear the songs. And so she dozed, nestled in the dark bosom of a winter’s night, with the distant sounds of her family’s raucous merriment to make the solitude unlonely.

Suddenly, through the babble of voices and her cousins’ bawdy ballad, the familiar tones of a _teorban_ sounded. At first they were barely to be heard, lone notes scattered amongst the clamour like the first stars at dusk. But then the others began to fall silent. Notes became silver-linked phrases which became constellations of music, filling the night.

Spellbound, Helena rose, clutching a wolf’s pelt about her shoulders. She slipped from her room, standing in the hallway to listen.

As if the music had waited for her to rise to meet it, Julija’s low, lilting voice began to sing:

 _“Oh, if each sigh were a white-winged dove,_  
_If each tear were a glittering jewel,_  
_If each word I spoke shone golden,_  
_Then my love might not prove so cruel.”_

Helena crept closer, drawn by an ache in her heart. With a wall between her and the singer, she could let herself listen to the song without holding any part of her soul above the tide that flowed around her, nor need she fear what might show on her face. She leaned against the door, ear pressed to the rough-hewn wood.

 _“Steal me away, take me away,_  
_Set my feet on the unknown track._  
_No matter how far I must go from her_  
_My heart shall lead me back.”_

If only all Julija’s love was in the sad, soft beauty of her songs. If only there were not that other side: the dark, fire-blackened ugliness when all Bohun’s blazing joys had burned out. Helena had caught glimpses of it when strangers smiled at her too long, and she feared it. Bohun’s envy tasted of blood in her throat and black charcoal between her teeth.

But then there was the music, and the sweet, fragile hopes it held. Helena yearned for the woman who sang those songs. She pressed her body to the door, heart full, every fibre of her being responding to Julija’s voice.

The last chords faded, and Helena released a breath she had not known she held.

Then her cousin Lukasz’s voice spoke, low enough that she could not make out the words. A strained silence followed, broken by someone’s nervous laughter.

Whatever Julija Bohun said in response, Helena heard it only as a growl that sent a shiver crawling over her skin.

Another moment of dreadful quiet, this one so deep and so poisonous that Helena trembled.

Then there was a clatter of falling benches and angry cries, and Helena’s aunt’s iron voice raised in command: “Out! Get out, Bohun! Get you out into the snow to cool your head!”

Booted feet beat staccato towards the door. Heart in her throat, Helena sprang away, shrinking back into the shadows even as the door was heaved open. Bohun stood in the doorway, a black outline against golden firelight. The Cossack kicked the heavy door shut behind her with such force that it rattled the windowpanes and Helena cried out in shock.

Julija spun at the cry, hand darting to her hip. Though she had taken off _kontusz_ and _żupan_ , she had buckled on her swordbelt again, as she always did when drinking with men.

“Who’s there?” the Cossack demanded.

Then she saw Helena: a flicker of white linen in the dim hallway.

“Princess!” Once she’d dropped her hands from her sabre she did not seem to know what to do with them.

“Good evening, Bohun.” It seemed the only thing to say.

“I beg your pardon, princess! I meant no disrespect—could never intend such! Not to you.” Julija’s restless hand had come to rest on her chest. It lay over her heart, as though trying to hold the intemperate thing still. “How much of what… How much did you hear?”

“Your song was lovely,” Helena said.

“That was all you heard?”

“And my aunt bidding you go outside.”

“That’s right,” Julija said, nodding, as if to herself. “That’s where I’m going: to cool my head. Excuse me.”

She bowed to Helena—the deep, Cossack’s bow, bending at the waist with her hat in hand, the end of her braid sweeping over the floor. _Horilka_ had stolen none of the grace from that bow. Julija straightened, with only the slightest suggestion of unsteadiness, and turned to go.

“You’re going outside?” Helena asked.

“Yes.”

“But… but that’s the wrong way.”

Bohun stopped. There was something oddly touching in her embarrassment—a vulnerability in those confused eyes that Helena seldom saw.

“Come,” Helena said, emboldened by Julija’s helplessness. “I’ll take you outside.”

Heart pounding at her own daring, she offered Julija her arm.

Bohun took it, stunned and staring.

They walked together down the hallway. Julija seemed overwhelmed: half the time she leant into Helena as she might with a comrade, head resting against Helena’s shoulder. Then she would remember herself and jerk stiffly upright, shooting anxious glances up at Helena’s from beneath her dark lashes.

Helena walked in blind unreality. Her body burned where Julija pressed against her and whether she longed for the moments when Julija pulled away or regretted them, she could not say.

When they finally stepped out into the icy stillness of the night, the cold snapped them both from their reveries. Bohun gasped: the chill struck her body like ice water. Helena knew she should move away from Julija at once, but the woman looked so pitifully exposed in her linen shirt. Helena was fully clad and had the wolf fur from her bedroom about her shoulders, but she still felt winter’s bite.

Without a word, Helena draped one half of the wolf’s pelt over Julija’s shoulders. She dropped her eyes, feeling the weight of the Cossack’s gaze.

“Thank you for your kindness, princess.” Julija’s voice was soft as smoke.

“You’re welcome.”

Helena felt the other woman’s arm—still linked through her own—shift. There was a light touch at her hip: Bohun was about to slide her arm around Helena’s waist.

At once Helena shifted her weight, moving her arm so it knocked Julija’s hand aside.

“Look at the stars,” Helena exclaimed, staring up at the jewel-strewn sky. “They’re so beautiful tonight!”

It had been intended merely a as distraction, but gazing up at the glittering heavens, Helena felt peace steal into her soul.

Bohun spared them a glance, then looked back, captivated by the stars’ reflected light in Helena’s eyes.

“You love them,” Julija said softly. Even had Helena turned to look at her, she would not have known how to read the sorrowing envy in the Cossack’s face. “Why?”

“Because... no matter how sad I may feel, I know they’re always there. That they should be so lovely and yet be eternal is a comfort, or so I’ve always believed. I think God must have hung them there for that reason: so we may be reminded of the beauty of His creation, and so keep the blackness of despair from our hearts.”

“Do you really think so?”

Helena did turn then, tilting her head.

“Do you not? What do you see, if not beauty?”

“Cruelty.” The answer came, sharp and swift as a slap, and for a moment Helena could only stare in shocked silence.

Bohun turned her face to the heavens. If she saw cruelty there, she answered it in kind.

“How many have died under those stars, wishing that just once, their suffering would be seen with pity?” The Cossack glared at the winter sky. “How many die with starlight in their eyes, their last breath a wish to have their doom rewritten, a prayer that their stars could change? The stars hold our fates! Perhaps some are born under fortunate stars, but how many more are cursed?”

“Is that truly all you see?” Helena asked. Her voice trembled, though she tried to hide it.

Bohun startled out of her bitter reflections. Yet even the fading traces of the hatred with which she’d watched the stars were disquieting.

“Yes.”

“Then… I am sorry for it.”

Julija bowed her head. “Ey, don’t say that princess.”

“But I am. I’m sorry.” With surprise, Helena realised how much she meant it. And it hurt—hurt beyond all reason—to see that proud head bowed.

Not knowing what else to do, Helena pulled the fur closer around Julija’s shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Bohun asked, head snapping up. As vulnerable as she had seemed before, now she armoured herself in pride.

“Aren’t you cold?” Helena still could not meet her eyes.

“No, I needed to cool my head. Cold is what I need.” The Cossack shook herself, and lifted her head, face lit by winter starlight. “Yes. That’s what I need!”

Before Helena could say a word Julija slipped out from under the fur and bent to the great drift that the eaves of the house. She scooped up the snow in her cupped palms and scrubbed it against her face and bare neck as though she were washing.

“Cold snow and colder stars!” Bohun said, grinning defiance up at the firmament, even as her teeth chattered. Her long lashes were powdered white, and she licked the snow from the corners of her lips as though it were sugar.

“Bohun, you’ll catch your death!” Helena cried, unnerved by that wild smile.

“No, not me. Cold’ll never get me. I used to think I’d freeze to death, but now the cold and I are old friends, and death too!”

Helena moved to her side, but Bohun hardly seemed to notice, even when Helena covered her shivering body with the wolf’s fur. A fey mania had possessed the Cossack, and Helena had a glimpse of the truth behind all those stories: a woman who charged Tatar _tchambuls_ with a red sword and war glittering in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t have been sent out here. You’re drunk.”

Julija laughed. Helena could smell the _horilka_ on her breath. “Ey, but if I hadn’t left, I would’ve beaten Lukasz like a dog! And he wouldn’t have dared say a word again, no—not until Theophany.”

“What? Why?” Helena exclaimed.

Bohun had still been grinning like a she-wolf, but at Helena’s question she blanched, clearly wishing she could take back her own words and (if God were merciful) be rendered mute for the rest of her life.

“He... he…”

“What?” Helena asked. The mad gleam had left Julija’s eyes, and Helena couldn’t help enjoying how she’d she’d somehow reduced Julija to stuttering embarrassment. Smiling a little at the expectation of fun, she said: “Come, you can tell me! He’s my cousin, after all. I grew up with him. What stupidity has he been spouting now?”

“It’s not something meant for your ears, princess.”

“Do you really think you could shock me?” Helena said, wheedling. “I hear everything, I promise you. No one thinks I listen, but I do.”

“It’s not right,” Bohun mumbled.

Perhaps a little dishonourably, Helena poked Julija as though they were two girls giggling together at a country dance, teasing: “Will you keep secrets from me when we’re married?”

Drunk as she was, Julija Bohun was defenseless against such an attack. She blurted out her secret: “He said that, if he were under the same roof as a girl he was contracted to marry, he’d go find her and steal a kiss or two to keep him warm on a winter night.”

“That’s what he said?” Helena felt a chill that had nothing of the night’s cold.

Condemned to tell the truth, Bohun could not now free herself from her fate. “He asked me what kind of Cossack I was that I didn’t go right back to your bedroom, instead of singing love songs.”

Helena shrank away from Julija, though she could hardly escape when they stood so close together. She knew she was blushing, confused and scared all at once. Helena had imagined such things. Alone, in her room, listening to Bohun’s music, she’d thought of things that she knew she should only want once God had blessed their union. She wanted them, though. Fantasies had played out in her head: Julija coming to her bed at night, mad with love and desire. But in her imaginings, her imagination had still been the greater power. In any reality in which Julija might steal into her room, Helena knew she would be powerless. Only the fantasy was safe; all else was formless desires and uncertainties.

Yet Julija said she loved her, said that she longed for her, said that Helena’s merest smile struck like annunciation. Even when she wasn’t singing, her words were love songs. Marriages were seldom about love or desire, Helena knew. But she hardly knew what either love or desire meant. Helena only knew that Julija had never said the things to her that Helena’s cousins said to the serving maids.

“Would you want to?” Helena asked.

“Princess?”

“Do you want me... like that?” Helena flinched at her own boldness, but stayed resolute.

Bohun’s breath caught. She tried, with all the willpower she could muster, not to think of Helena in her bed: the white shift clinging to the soft lines of breast and hip, her lips parting, her cheeks flushed, eyes shining with desire, the inky river of her hair spilling over her shoulders as she—

“Julija?”

The Cossack swallowed, eyes shining at the familiar use of her name, almost unable to believe that she’d heard it.

“You’re so beautiful that I sometimes fear to look at you.”

“But do you want me?” Helena pressed, throwing caution to the wind, desperate to know the truth. “My cousins say all kinds of things about the girls and boys they want. They say what they want to do—the _things_ they want to do! All these things!”

“I would never say such things to you, princess!” Bohun protested. “Never!”

“But do you think them? Those kinds of things?” Then, reckless beyond reckoning: “We are to be married, so should _I_ want you like that? When the servant girls get married, sometimes that’s all they talk about! I think of you, but not… not the way people seem to talk about people they want. Is that still wanting?” Caught a paroxysm of uncertainties, Helena cried, “I don’t know anything! I don’t know! I only want to know! Am I even supposed to want you? And how would I know?”

In the shocked silence that followed, Helena could feel her heart hammering against her ribcage as the realisation of what she had said began to dawn. Terrified, appalled at her own words, she hung her head, shame burning her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said that—any of it. It’s sinful. It’s not proper; not maidenly.”

“Helena…” Her name sounded like rapture on Bohun’s lips, and it suddenly was more than Helena could bear.

“Don’t,” Helena said, choking back tears. “Don’t say anything.”

“But Helena, how could I not want you?” Julija said in a hoarse voice.

Helena raised her head. Julija was staring at her, paler than the snow.

“Tell me,” Helena whispered. She felt herself trembling. Bohun’s beautiful face blurred in the starlight as tears welled up in Helena’s eyes. “Tell me how you want me. Make me understand.”

“I want to kiss you. I want to taste your lips, to feel you melt into my arms, to feel you reaching for me, wanting me, pulling me closer. I want to touch you—with my lips, with my hands, with my tongue—it doesn’t matter, so long as I can touch you! I want you lying back on a bed of silk, forgetting everything but my name.” Julija’s eyes were smoke and smouldering flame. “Princess, if I could hear you speak my name as if you loved me… I would sell my soul for such a thing!”

A flickering heat had sprung to life in Helena’s body.

“You want to kiss me?”

Bohun could not answer: she had gone beyond words.

“But would you let me kiss you? Would you promise, on your love, not to… not to do anything else? Not to move, even?”

“Anything you want,” the Cossack breathed, body taut as drawn bowstring.

Before fear could stop her, Helena bent and kissed Bohun on the mouth.

Julija was shaking—with desire or the effort to be still, Helena did not know. But Julija did not move.

Helena’s hands felt clumsy on the other woman’s shoulders. Not knowing what else to do, she pressed her mouth harder against Julija’s, wanting her kiss to say all that she could not, even had she known what words to use.

The other woman’s skin was cold to the touch. Helena put her arms around Julija’s shoulders, enfolding her in warmth. Julija was only slightly shorter than she, but as Helena stepped closer, Julija had to tilt her face to Helena’s so as not to break the kiss.

Helena froze at the movement, her mouth still on Julija’s. When no other movement followed, she relaxed.

Helena kissed her, though she felt the clumsiness of her own movements. She breathed through her nose, and then wondered if that could be right. Maybe she was supposed to stop? The couples she’d seen kissing always seemed to move their heads more, to come up for air, perhaps.

Then Julija moaned, and Helena decided she didn’t care.

She kissed Julija, hands beginning to explore in nervous starts and fits. With Julija dressed only in her linen shirt, Helena could feel the strong set of her shoulders through the thin cloth. Curious, one hand drifted down to touch Julija’s arm, feeling the swordswoman’s hard muscles under her fingers. Yet when Helena placed her other hand over Bohun’s breastbone, she could feel Julija’s heart beating even as her own did.

Helena did not want to break the kiss. But unsettling memories of her cousins and the servant girls stole some of the pleasant heat from her blood. She leaned back, searching Julija’s face for any sign of fear.

The woman seemed on the verge of shattering. Tears caught the starlight in her eyes, and her chest rose and fell under Helena’s hand so fast that Helena wondered if she was in pain. Yet the instant she moved to draw away, she saw true pain on Julija’s face.

Too nervous to speak, Helena kissed her again. Julija’s stuttering, indrawn breath was strangely beautiful. Helena kissed her hard, then suddenly soft again, and Julija’s mouth opened under Helena’s with a gasp.

Not knowing what to do, Helena pulled back again. Her hand was still on Julija’s breastbone. Thinking suddenly of what she’d seen others do, Helena shifted her hand, holding her breath, waiting for a reaction. So intently did she watch Bohun’s face, so watchful was she for the slightest sign or reaction, that Julija’s loud cry of pleasure when Helena’s hand grazed her breast shocked Helena. She snatched her hand away, jerking back.

Julija’s eyes flew open, dark as the night.

_Get away! Once she has you, she’ll never let go!_

Julija lurched towards her and Helena sprang away.

The wolfskin fell into the snow between them.

“Stay back!” Helena cried.

Bohun’s breath made white plumes in the air. Without the warmth of Helena’s body or the fur about her, she began to shiver. Helena could see the way her hands shook as she held them out, as though Helena were a skittish horse.

“I’m sorry.” Julija’s face was stricken, dazed with loss. “Please, come back. Kiss me again. I’ll never move! I’ll be a statue in your arms, if only you kiss me again!”

“I shouldn’t have done this! We’re not married!”

“We can kiss!” Julija cried. “You asked what wanting was: did you not want that? When you kissed me you must have tasted my soul on my lips, I wanted you so badly! And I know you wanted me—I could tell! How else could you kiss me like that? How else could you touch me like that?” The Cossack dropped to her knees in the snow, tugging at the fastenings of her collar. “Oh, if you would learn of wanting, you have but to lay your hand on my breast and feel my heart!”

“Stop that! Stop! I—” Helena clutched her hand to her chest, frightened. Why must everything with Bohun be like this? So beautiful one moment, then violent the next?

“I love you!” Bohun’s words were a plea. Shirt half open, on her knees in the snow, shivering with cold, Julija should have seemed pitiful. But the desperation in her eyes came from somewhere deep in her soul—unfathomably deep—from darknesses Helena did not understand.

Helena did not know if she wanted her betrothed. But she knew she was afraid of her.

“Put on the wolf’s fur,” she said, retreating back under the eaves of the house. “Put it on before you freeze.”

“Princess, please!”

“I’m going back into the house.”

Julija finally seemed to feel the cold then. Her hands sought blindly for the fur, and she pulled it to her, clutching it against her chest. Yet she did not put it on but only held it close, staring at Helena.

“Please, I’d do anything you command me to, if only you can love me.”

“Put on the fur, Bohun!”

Julija obeyed with clumsy haste, then stared up at Helena, huddled on her knees in the snow like a beggar. Something like resentment flickered in her eyes then, and that frightened Helena most of all.

“Don’t stay in the snow, I beg you. You’ll freeze.”

The Cossack lurched to her feet. The cold had leeched the strength from her bones, and she moved awkwardly with numbed limbs.

“M-may I come nearer?”

Helena nodded, but it took all the courage she possessed not to press herself against the walls as Julija came close.

Bohun stood under the eaves, some feet apart.

“I love you,” Julija said again. This time the words seemed a confession of some secret sorrow.

“So you have told me.” Helena looked up at the stars, trying not to cry. _Cruel?_ Maybe they were cruel. But they were still beautiful.

She drew in a shaking breath.

“You frighten me, Julija.”

“Don’t say that!” the Cossack whispered, sounding as if there was a knife between her ribs.

“But it’s true.” Helena wrapped her arms about herself. “I don’t want it to be. But it’s true.”

“You have nothing to be afraid of!”

“Why can’t you understand?” Helena exclaimed, and her voice broke as the tears began to fall. “I’m betrothed to you, Julija. Do you think I want to be afraid of you? Don’t you think I _want_ to love you?”

“That is all I could ever want! All I could ever hope for! I’d give anything, if you could love me!”

And still, Bohun did not understand. Would she ever?

“Give me a chance to love you! You say I have nothing to be afraid of, but then you say these wild things or ride off to raid and—and—” Helena was crying now, but she had to get the words out. “And you say I have nothing to be afraid of, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am afraid! Why can’t you see that?”

Hiding her face in her hands, Helena gave herself utterly to the fears and doubts in her heart. The tears were cold by the time they leaked between her fingers.

The boards creaked, and she raised her head to see Bohun standing, holding out the wolf’s fur to her with outstretched arms.

When Helena neither took the fur nor flinched away, Julija ventured another hesitant step.

Helena wept as the fur was tucked about her shoulders with icy hands, and she wept even as she reached out and pulled Julija closer, leaning her head against the other woman’s shoulder.

Bohun said nothing. Helena could not guess what passed through the other woman’s mind, whether she had understood at last, or if the Cossack merely wanted to be near to her. Or perhaps she had merely craved the warmth: Julija was shivering hard enough that it the other woman’s body seemed it must shake itself to pieces.

Helena wiped her tears on her sleeves.

“Let’s go inside,” she whispered.

The sounds of merrymaking still rang through the house, the halls empty of all but shadows. Without a word, Julija walked Helena to her chamber door.

They both paused.

Julija drew back a step, head low.

“Princess, I am sorry I scared you.”

“I know,” Helena said sadly, touching the other woman’s shoulder— the very lightest touch, but it melted the sharp, miserable lines of Bohun’s back.

Bohun raised her eyes to Julija, and the beauty of her face struck Helena’s heart with bittersweet, nameless regret.

“I don’t want you to be unhappy,” Bohun said. “I will try…” She trailed off, seeing something in Helena’s expression that stopped her words.

“I will try too, Bohun.”

Helena closed the door behind her.

Julija stood a moment, stock still in the dark hallway, and whatever thoughts plagued her, she did not share them with the night. Then she strode into the shadows of the house, seeking her own room.

Above them, the winter stars wheeled in celestial order, unchanging as ever. The two women never agreed upon the nature of those stars. It was, of course, a matter of perspective: for some, the stars are cruel, for others, a sign of hope. But they have never changed because a human heart has wished it. For that, Julija Bohun was right to hate them, and always would.


End file.
